Pudong : Map (The Full Wiki) The Full Wiki Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article: Pudong ( ), officially known as Pudong New Area ( ), is a district of Shanghai , China that enjoys sub-provincial administrative status. It is named "Pudong" because of its location on the east side of the Huangpu river , on the opposite of Puxi , the west side. After its merger with Nanhui District (now defunct) in May 2009, the Pudong New Area comprises the majority of land in eastern Shanghai. Since the beginning of its development in 1990 when plans were first announced, Pudong has become a New Open Economic Development Zone, and has emerged as China's financial and commercial hub. Pudong is home to the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone reflective of Shanghai and China's rapid economic development. Geography in the west and the East China Sea in the east. It has an area of 522.8 km² and a population of approximately 1.5 million people.

Pudong is contrasted with Puxi , the older part of Shanghai on the west bank of the Huangpu River , which is divided into various administrative districts. As Pudong is a large district geographically, it may well be divided into smaller administrative districts in the future. Government Districts of the direct-controlled municipality of Shanghai are administratively on the same level as prefecture-level cities . However, the government of Pudong has a status equivalent to that of a sub-provincial city , which is half a level above a prefecture-level city. This is due to Pudong's size and importance as the financial hub of China. Population Since its inception as a special economic zone and China's financial centre, Pudong's population largely consists of migrants from the Puxi side of Shanghai, those from other regions in China, and increasingly, foreigners. Economy With the Nanhui District merger in May 2009, Pudong's new gross domestic product amounts to an estimated RMB370 billion (US$53.98 billion), roughly equal to that of Slovenia . Its GDP per capita is therefore around US$16,938.

The area's aggregate GDP has now surpassed that of six provincial-level entities and is a figure that lies above most of the world's countries. The area is divided into four distinct economic districts. Apart from Lujiazui Trade and Finance Zone, there is Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, the largest free trade zone in mainland China covering approximately 10 km² in north-east Pudong. The Jinqiao Export Processing Zone is another major industrial area in Pudong covering 19 km². Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park is a special area for technology-oriented businesses, covering 17 km² in central Pudong. The newest Disney Theme Park is planned to be located in Pudong. Transportation Pudong International Airport opened its doors in 1999, the same year Shanghai Metro Line 2 commenced services between Puxi (west bank of the river) and Pudong. Line 2 terminates at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park , although expansion plans bring the line even further east to Pudong International Airport. A magnetic levitation train began operating in 2004, moving passengers between the airport and Longyang Road Metro station.

The Metro's Line 4 Loop and Line 6 also began operation in Pudong in 2007. Metro Lines 7 , 8 and 9 will also have parts in Pudong before the start of Expo 2010. Ships on the Huangpu River with Pudong in view Pudong is connected to Puxi by several tunnels and four major bridges . The first of these bridges were the Nanpu Bridge (1991) and the Yangpu Bridge (1993). The Xupu Bridge opened in 1996. The latest of these is Lupu Bridge , which is the world's longest arch bridge and was completed in 2002. Currently there are five tunnels that link the two sides, Dapu Rd. Tunnel, the first tunnel across the Huangpu River, Yan'an Rd. Tunnel, running east-west, and Dalian Rd. Tunnel, running north-south, Fuxing Rd. Tunnel, complementing the Yan'an Rd. Tunnel, Waihuan Tunnel, one part of Shanghai Outer Ring Express. Two new tunnels linking Lujiazui to Puxi are under construction.

Roads in Pudong have no particular longitudinal or latitudinal orientation. Major thoroughfares Pudong Avenue, Zhangyang Road and Yanggao Road run east-west until Yangpu Bridge before turning gradually to become north-south. Shiji (Century) Avenue cuts all three major roads and extends from Lujiazui to Century Park. Yanggao Rd. extends south to A20, Shanghai's outer Ring road, which runs east-west from Xupu Bridge and then north-south beginning at the interchange near Renxi Village, when the east-west expressway turns into Yingbin Avenue, headed for Pudong International Airport. History "Pudong" refered to the land in the east of Huangpu River. However, the area nearby the River was administered by other districts in Puxi including Huangpu District , Yangpu District , Nanshi District (absorbed by Huangpu District now). The rest of the area was administered by Chuansha County.Before 1990, Pudong was mainly farmland and countryside.

In 1993, the Chinese government decided to set up a Special Economic Zone in Chuansha county, then Pudong New Area was created, and simultaneously, the land along the river bank was turned over to Pudong. The western tip of the Pudong district was designated to be the new financial hub of modern China called the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone . Several landmark buildings were constructed in Lujiazui during the 1990s to raise the image and awareness of the area. These include the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jin Mao Building.On May 6 2009 , it was disclosed that the State Council had approved the proposal to merge Nanhui District to Pudong.

More images image:Shanghai Pudong Skyline.jpg|Shanghai Pudong skyline Image:Shanghai-pudong panorama.jpg| Panoramic view at Shanghai Pudong (from the East)Image:Shaghai Jin Mao.JPG|Jin Mao buildingImage:Pudong district__roads traffic skyscrapers, Shanghai.JPG|Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, PudongImage:Lujiazui skyline, Pudong, Shanghai.JPG|Lujiazui skyline, PudongImage:Lujiazui Skyline from Bund.jpg|Pudong from the Bund Image:Pudong.ogg|Pudong at night (video)Image:Shanghaipudong.jpg|Pudong at night with Oriental PearlImage:Shanghai_(Huang_Pu_River_at_Night)_046.jpg‎|Huangpu River at night.

“Better City, Better Life” is the theme of Expo 2010.‎Image:Pudong.JPG|A profile shot of PudongImage:Shanghai_(Huang_Pu_River_at_Night)_033.jpg‎|Pudong from Huangpu river cruise at night Image:China Winter 2006-07 176.jpg|Pudong night viewImage:Shanghai pudong.jpg| View of Pudong area at night timeImage:Pudong 4048 HDR.jpg| View of Pudong area, using HDR techniqueImage:Shanghai oriental pearl tower.JPG| View of the Oriental Pearl Tower See also Global Real Estate | Monaco Real Estate | Hong Kong Real Estate Print New York City (real estate) versus the world The Big Apple’s luxury real estate still a bargain, but gap narrows as the markets in some cities soften September 01, 2014 Tiny Monaco, which is occupied almost entirely by Monte Carlo, is home to the most expensive residential real estate in the world. Can “a real New York bargain” carry a multi-million dollar price tag?

The answer is an emphatic “yes” if the product in question is real estate — and if you’re comparing it to property in other parts of the world. There are a number of global cities where prices are far higher than they are in the Big Apple. “We’re a bargain, and that’s the way it’s been for a number of years,” said Kevin Brown, an associate broker for Sotheby’s International Realty, who has a long list of clients from Asia. “We’re perceived as value.” And the prices differentials are pretty astounding in some cases. For example, in Monaco, the most expensive market in the world, homes average $6,200 per square foot, according to the most recent Wealth Report from London-based real estate consultancy Knight Frank. By comparison, the average price in Manhattan was $2,300 a foot as of March, according to the report. That’s 60 percent less, though appraisal guru Jonathan Miller pegged the Manhattan average at $2,735 in the second quarter ( see related story ). Hong Kong, London and Singapore are also pricier than New York, which ranked sixth on Knight Frank’s top 10 list, two notches higher than the year before.

The cities were ranked based on the top 5 percent of their sales during all, or part, of 2013. While the ranking includes several locations in Asia and Europe, Middle Eastern and South American cities are noticeably absent: For all its vast investments in luxury development, for instance, Dubai did not crack the top 10. Neither did Sao Paolo, Brazil, though both were price leaders in their regions, the data show. And faced with a softening housing market, much of it by governmental design, the four Asian cities on the list may see prices drop soon. In addition, New York is narrowing the gap with some Asian cities, where values are sliding after a massive multi-year run-up, brokers say. “Prices are softening,” Brown said, adding that government efforts to keep real estate bubbles deflated seem to be working, especially in China. “The Chinese government works in the same fashion as co-op boards do here in Manhattan,” he said. “They are the breaks in the marketplace so as to control runaway speculation.” This month, The Real Deal looked at the priciest markets on the planet for residential real estate and at how they stack up against New York.

Monaco Residential values seem to know few bounds in this square-mile European country on the Mediterranean. For the third year in a row, Monaco, which is almost entirely occupied by the famed Monte Carlo quarter, took top honors in Knight Frank’s report. And as of March, the average luxury home price of $6,200 a foot was up 10 percent, from $5,635 in 2013, according to the report. Measured another way, $1 million in Monaco will buy about 162 square feet, or less than half a Manhattan “micro” apartment. By comparison, $1 million in New York buys 431 square feet. Experts say that Monaco’s extreme lack of supply propels prices: Not only is the principality tiny, but high-rise construction was mostly banned for three decades starting in the 1980s, until recently. In addition, residents, who reportedly include Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr and actor Roger Moore, who portrayed James Bond in seven films, pay no income tax.

That’s giving Monaco, which has a full-time population of 38,000, an edge over another tax haven, Switzerland, where laws are tightening (see Geneva, below). “Those tax laws have allowed it to stay so isolated from any economic upheaval,” said Luigi Rosabianca, a New York real estate attorney who has clients from Monaco. But however incrementally, the supply of homes is increasing. A rare condo tower, the 49-story Tour Odéon from developer Groupe Marzocco, is now being marketed, with 26 of its 70 units sold as of August, according to Bloomberg News. One-bedrooms start at $7 million, and the five-level 35,000-square-foot penthouse is listed at a stunning $390 million, which would be the most expensive apartment ever sold in the world if it trades at that price. Hong Kong This waterfront Chinese city — where $1 million buys 222 square feet — saw an average sales price of $4,550 a foot this year, down from $4,810 a foot last year, according to Knight Frank.

Like with Monaco, a constrained supply helps to inflate values, analysts say. The greater Hong Kong region, which has 7 million people living in roughly 400 square miles, is similar in size to the New York area. But much of the city is made up of small, scattered islands and a good portion is covered with steep hills that are difficult to develop. The government also owns most of the land and can impose strict rules about what goes up on it. And though the city’s leaders have, in recent years, suggested taking millions of square feet of unused warehouse space left over from the Hong Kong’s manufacturing heyday and converting it to housing, plans have not gotten far. But efforts to tamp down prices in other ways may be having an effect. Worried about a housing bubble, the Chinese government has for the last few years tried to rein in the market by requiring larger down payments, capping how much buyers can borrow to buy homes and slapping taxes on property flippers. Subsequently, 2013 saw the lowest number of transactions in the city since the 1990s, according news reports.

Plus, in the 12-month period ending in July, overall housing prices dipped, though by less than a percent. In response, major developers like Sun Hung Kai Properties slashed prices at mega-projects like the Cullinan, a glassy two-tower condo on Victoria Harbor that’s the city’s tallest residential building. Last fall, the company offered a 70 percent discount on “stamp duty,” a type of real estate fee. But even with the price cut, some apartments there still traded at close to $4,000 a square foot. Click for larger view London If there’s a global city that New York gets pitted against more than any other, it’s London. At an average of $3,700 a square foot, residential sales price “across the pond” in England’s capital city are higher than they are in New York, data show. Still, that’s a 10 percent drop from a year ago, when the average was $4,095 per foot. For $1 million in London, a buyer can pick up 271 square feet.

Though land is not as limited as it is in Manhattan and other island metropolises, strict zoning regulations keep prices high: The city ranks a lowly 45th globally in terms of skyscrapers, Knight Frank reports. Hong Kong and New York are Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. In terms of major sales, the blockbuster project continues to be One Hyde Park, a modernistic complex of four linked mid-rise towers completed in 2009 in the Knightsbridge area. This spring, a penthouse there sold for a record $255 million, according to news reports. And it’s not the first record at the condo, an 80-unit project developed by the Candy Brothers’ CPC Group and the Qatari firm Waterknight. In 2011, Rinat Akhmetov, a Ukrainian oligarch, paid a combined $248 million for a penthouse and adjacent apartment, according to published reports. Critics say that these ultra-big-ticket purchases obscure what’s really happening in the market, by artificially inflating average prices. But real estate in the city seems robust all the same.

This summer, home prices finally recovered all the value they had lost during the recession and actually surpassed their peaks from the last boom, according to several market reports. And London is home to more “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” than any other city. That trend is expected to continue for at least the coming decade, Knight Frank reported. Singapore Clocking in at No. 4 on Knight Frank’s ranking is Singapore, another enclave where land is scarce. With a population of about 5 million across 277 square miles, the city has an average sale price of $2,850 a square foot for its super-luxury properties. That’s down slightly from the average of $2,865 in 2013. But far greater plunges are expected. Overall home prices were down 3.7 percent in July from last summer, and prices are expected to tumble by as much as 20 percent by 2015, analysts say. Those drops reflect policy changes aimed at staving off a bubble. Like with Hong Kong, fears of over-speculation by investors have prompted Singapore’s government to put in place rules to avoid a collapse.

For example, foreign buyers are slapped with levies of up to 15 percent for some home purchases, though residents of the U.S., Norway and Iceland, among a few other countries, are exempt from those fees under the terms of a decade-old trade pact. Also, buyers can’t finance more than 60 percent of any home purchase. Analysts say the market will soon reveal whether those curbs have gone too far, as about 80,000 new apartments are reportedly coming online by 2018. Among those new properties is a blue-chip, 52-unit condo called Cluny Park Residence. Developed by Tuan Sing Holdings, the property, which in addition to other amenities will have a rooftop pool, is supposed to open in 2016. Sales have not started yet and prices have not been publicly released. Geneva Geneva, the six-square-mile, high-altitude European financial hub in Switzerland, edged out New York by just a hair. Average sale prices there are $2,650, the data show. And in TRD’s carton-of-milk economic shorthand, $1 million get buyers 374 square feet.

Prices rose through the recession there and may climb higher, according to several brokers who’ve been publicly quoted on the topic. But a series of controversial recent rules designed to stem overdevelopment have taken aim at this second-home market — which may limit the stock of those dwellings, particularly for foreigners. Second homes can now only be built in certain areas, and for the most part, not be super-large. As a result, Geneva, and Switzerland in general, which have long been trendy with British, German and Italian buyers, may be losing some of its appeal, brokers say. In addition, regulatory changes are tempering its lure as a tax haven for foreigners. However, even if sellers are now required to pay capital gains taxes locally when they sell Geneva homes, those sales can be tax-free on a national level, so investors might not packs their bags for good. Sydney Homes in the top 5 percent of this Australian city average $2,250 a square foot, just a bit less than New York’s figure when Knight Frank collected its data.

And unlike some other cities on the list, Sydney continues to show strong growth; its sales price per square foot average was up from $2,125 in 2013, the data show. A single demographic may explain the booming home market: Chinese buyers spent a staggering $23 billion on real estate in the country from 2007 to 2014, according to a Credit Suisse report. (By comparison, Chinese spent $22 billion on residential real estate in the much larger U.S. from just April 2013 to March 2014; most of that was directed to a few cities, including New York.) Sotheby’s Brown estimates that a quarter of all buyers of new condos in the city this year have been Asian. Other analysts add that a two-year-old program that offers Australian visas in exchange for $5 million in real estate investment is also playing a part in fueling the residential market. Brokers say Chinese buyers prefer homes with views of Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

In May, a Mediterranean-style waterside mansion called Altona sold to a Chinese buyer for $53 million, setting a record for the priciest home ever sold in the country. “I haven’t seen a trend like this in my 30 years in real estate, in terms of a brand-new demographic entering the Australian market with such impact,” John McGrath, chief executive of Sydney’s McGrath Estate Agents, told the New York Times earlier this year. Paris In France’s capital, where Knight Frank said prices average $2,200 a foot, demand has seemed unstoppable. Property values have jumped by double digits in the last five years alone, according to news reports. In other words, the city made serious gains through the recession and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. For many, the most coveted homes in a city with little major residential construction are found behind 300-year-old limestone walls in the center of Paris, on Ile Saint-Louis, said Sofia Falleroni, a broker with Town Residential, who works with buyers from France. Other popular destinations for foreign buyers include the Golden Triangle area by the Champs-Elysees and Avenue George V, a major retail area, sources say.

“Paris never really seems to go down when the market fluctuates,” Falleroni said. But some critics say that new tax laws passed in 2013, which increased the rate residents pay on incomes above $1 million to 75 percent, from 48 percent, may discourage new, wealthy arrivals from overseas. Moscow Russian oligarchs, many rich from oil, are driving the record-setting purchases outside their country. But brokers say some are buying closer to home as well. That explains average prices of $2,150 a square foot in Moscow, where $1 million purchases 463 square feet. Investment targets include the “Golden Mile,” or Ostozhenka Street, by the Moscow River, which is lined with landmarked Art Nouveau mansions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But wealthy buyers also like mixed-use high-rises — which usually have offices on lower floors and full-service condos above. Those towers are sprouting in the Moscow City Development, a former factory district that’s being converted into a high-density city-from-scratch.

The $15 billon project, which has been likened to the high-density Canary Wharf financial district in London, has been underway for 20 years and contains some of Europe’s tallest buildings, which are more geared for investment than for primary residences. It will take at least another decade before the district is completed. Gleaming towers are “a relatively new model for Moscow, which is an older city,” said Angela Rapoport, a Corcoran Group broker who was educated in Moscow and is from the former Soviet republic of Estonia. About half her clients today are Russian. But the recent turmoil in Ukraine, where separatists that appear to be backed by Russia are battling pro-government forces, has led to tough sanctions by Western countries. That, Rapoport said, has frozen the luxury market. “Multi-millionaires depend on Western capital,” she said, “so they can’t make a move without knowing if their business is okay.” Shanghai “It’s on fire,” said Sotheby’s Brown of this fast-growing coastal metropolis, where prices average $2,000 a square foot.

Some of the residential activity is being driven by investors, who are buying up newly constructed units, sometimes sight unseen, and then renting them out, said Brown, who compared the situation to Miami during the last boom. Once the units are rented, their owners usually just continue leasing them out. Brown, whose client list is 40 percent Asian, and other sources said these speculative investments are helping to create a housing bubble. The affluent Jing’an district offers several flashy examples of apartment towers that are popular with investors. On the other hand, ultra-wealthy residents who maintain their primary residences in Shanghai usually gravitate toward standalone villas, according to Daniel Chang, another Sotheby’s agent who is originally from Taiwan, but is now based in New York. Chang said these homes are almost suburban by Western standards, situated in massive developments like Pudong, on the eastern side of the Huangpu River, a burgeoning area away from the city center. While the Chinese home market has significantly cooled in recent months, analysts say established cities with mixed, global economies like Shanghai are better prepared to stave off a downturn. Beijing This city of 22 million, meanwhile, is seeing prices of $1,750 a square foot on average.

But with the Chinese home market’s softening, Knight Frank’s data, which was collected last year, may be a bit outdated. Still, luxury high-rise housing construction is proceeding. For example, China Zun, a sloping 118-story mixed-use tower designed by U.S. architecture firm KPF will feature offices, hotels and apartments. It’s slated for completion in 2016. In addition, the Park Hyatt Beijing, a 66-story building with 21 penthouses on the top nine floors, is also under construction nearby. Aware that buyers are on the hunt, Sotheby’s recently opened an office in the city; Century 21 has a beachhead, too. “There is a real sense that something is happening there,” said Christian Rogers, a broker with the Manhattan-based residential brokerage Core, who works with many foreign buyers and travels to China frequently.

“The sense of potential there is so huge.” Short URL Pudong: Views Then and Now - China Real Time Report - WSJ China Real Time Report Pudong: Views Then and Now Dec 21, 2011 11:46 am HKT 0 COMMENTS Reuters A woman is reflected in a window of an office in the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai September 22, 2011. More In Shanghai You Can Walk in the Sky in Shanghai, Once It's Safe A little more than 20 years ago, a few words from China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping set in motion the establishment of a major city extension on Shanghai’s east side, the Pudong New Area. Leaving little to chance, the government designed a district with the skyline molded on Manhattan, the broad avenues of Paris and the parks of London. To critics, Pudong came to represent the hubris of state-planning, a soulless construction zone – all hardware and no software – with too much government involvement to ever rival the world’s most dynamic financial centers.

Click to view an interactive timeline of Pudong’s development Today, Pudong boasts some of the best demographics of any real estate market in mainland China. The district has attracted investment from many of the world’s largest financial firms and emerged as the residential area of choice for many of China’s wealthiest people (see a WSJ story and interactive on the changes) Below, what commentators said years ago about Pudong – and what they think now: Huang Qifan, politician In 1998: “Vigorous attraction of foreign capital is an important way out for such a huge investment requirement.” – as deputy Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai. His view today: “Pudong had several firsts in China” for foreign investors, including the first bank and insurance branches, bonded trading zone, securities market and department store. “China didn’t at that time have any management experience in those areas…If you say Pudong’s development is of national implication I think that is because a lot of the national strategies were put on the ground in a piloting stage in Pudong.

So we provided China a chance to gain experience in those areas.” –as mayor of Chongqing Milton Friedman, economist In 2001: “Not a manifestation of the market economy but a statist monument for a dead pharaoh on the level of the pyramids.” He also called Pudong a “ Potemkin village .” The view today: “I think Friedman got it wrong at the time, and would reconsider his position today. Shanghai, and China generally, are a testament to the power of markets. Friedman also would have thought that greater economic liberty in China will lead in time to greater political liberty,” says Lanny Ebenstein, author of “Milton Friedman: A Biography.” (Mr. Friedman died in 2006) Gordon G. Chang, author of “ The Coming Collapse of China ” In 2001: The final chapter of Chang’s book, “Roads to Ruin: How the State Will Fall,” is set inside a newly built tower overlooking the twinkling Pudong skyline. “My father thinks that the Mainland’s future now looks bright.

Some of us, however, are not so sure.” His view today: “I’m definitely in the not-impressed category. You can always get growth when you spend money.” Joshua Cooper Ramo, commentator In 1998: “The result is a kind of what-is-wrong-with-this-picture economics,” he says in an essay entitled “ The Shanghai Bubble ” published in Foreign Policy magazine – as an editor at Time magazine. The view today: “Pudong is the capital of Chinese exceptionalism. On almost every corner you can see the work of economic tools that Western politicians might dream of these days, tools that have allowed China to snatch success from error over and over in the past 30 plus years of reform.” – now vice chairman at Kissinger Associates Inc. City Leaders In 1998: “We’re like poor parents who made their kids’ clothes a few sizes too big.” – Mayor Xu Kuangdi The view today: “Since Pudong has become an important growth pole for Shanghai’s future development, the comrades in Pudong have to shoulder great responsibilities.

We should firmly make development our top priority, analyze in depth the international economic situation, and actively employ all available means to attract enterprises engaging in the modern service industries and advanced manufacturing industries to come to Shanghai to develop.” – Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng Sam Crispin, property analyst In 1997: “We are expecting a snowballing effect of the big shift to Pudong by financial institutions and, if that happens, we should see it shaping up as a financial and economic hub by the end of the century.” (then with First Pacific Davies Savills) In 1999: “The relatively wealthy daytime population will increase as business in Lujiazui expands and Pudong will then be home to a large proportion of Shanghainese with the highest disposable incomes.” He predicts a 39% vacancy rate. In 2005: He determined it would be easier to teach his daughter to ride a bicycle in Pudong than the lanes of old Shanghai, and moved his family there. The view today: “A lot of the commentary frankly was quite similar to the ideas that are being bandied about for the property market today.

A lot of the reasoning is quite similar – who’s going to occupy all those buildings?” In Pudong, he says, “people underestimated the depth of demand,” from domestic companies and households. Now with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC. Construction Crane, symbol In 1996: After the mayor boasted that 18% of the world’s construction cranes were at work in Shanghai, international media widely reported – and exaggerated – the statistic. Reports described the crane as China’s national bird. The figure on how many cranes were working in Shanghai got rounded up to “a fifth,” “a quarter” and, in more than one publication, “ half ” the world’s total. Crane counting became a tool of financial analysts who decided that too many was a leading economic indicator of economic froth, such as in Dubai in recent years. The view today: “I have also heard lots of figures about very high percentages of the world’s ‘construction cranes’ being in Shanghai. I tend to dismiss them as complete rubbish,” says Chris Sleight, the London-based editor of International Construction magazine. He explains that in the building industry construction crane is a vague term, and no one counts crane production, their deployment or their retirement.

Wendy Yao, resident In 1994: Though she grew up within sight of Pudong, she had hardly visited until a client dispatched her to check out space atop the yet-uncompleted Pearl Oriental Tower for a restaurant. “It’s too early,” she advised. In 2004: When a client considered investing in a shopping mall in Pudong adjacent to the Pearl tower, she “still didn’t have a good impression of it.” In 2009: After her own financial industry job moved to Pudong, she bought a large apartment on the riverside with a wrap-around balcony and views of the twinkling skyline. In 2011: “You no longer feel it’s inconvenient to live in Pudong. The life is pretty easy here.” – James T. Areddy. Follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy Share this: China’s Manhattan Knock-Off Aspires To Be Bigger And Better Than The Real Thing China’s Manhattan Knock-Off Aspires To Be Bigger And Better Than The Real Thing 0 74 “You are building Manhattan,” I joked with a group of construction workers in what is becoming Tianjin’s new financial district.

He nodded his head and smiled as we stood together, peering out at a tight phalanx of half built skyscrapers that now command a tight bend on the Hai River, one tick from the East China Sea. There was no jest here though, this wasn’t a joke, this was for real: he really was building Manhattan. Well, a Chinese version of it anyway. Apparently not content with allowing New Yorkers to remain the sole beneficiaries of their city, a group of enterprising developers and government officials have engaged upon the most extensive and ambitious knock-off in human history: the creation of a Manhattan themed financial district — in China. The bounds of geography, culture, and history are no match for this rising superpower which takes architectural designs and urban layouts from around the world like plucking fruit from a tree. Why go to the Big Apple when we can bring the Big Apple to us? The Chinese version of Manhattan’s business district (FiDi) is called Yujiapu (于家堡), and it is slowly arising out of the heart of Bīnhǎi New District (滨海新区), which itself is a new area of Tianjin, a provincial level municipality 85 miles from Beijing.

In 2008, an ancient fishing village was swept off the face of the earth and a forest of skyscrapers were planted in its place. Scheduled for completion in 2019, Yujiapu isn’t just a copy of Manhattan’s FiDi, but is set to be even larger than the original. At 3.86 sq km in area, it is to become the “ largest single financial center on the world .” So not only is this a colossal knock off, it’s a colossal development in its own right. When finished, Yujiapu and the area across the Hai River immediately adjacent to it is slated to provide 15.2 million square meters (164 million square feet) of office space. Though larger in surface area, Yujiapu only intends to offer a little over a third of Manhattan’s business capacity. Perhaps not content with copying handbags and mobile phones, the Chinese are replicating entire buildings, villages, and now, entire city districts. Hallstatt, a near exact copy of the Austrian hamlet of the same name, has now opened to visitors in Guangdong province.

Shanghai is reenacting its colonial past and has built entire new districts designed to look like England, Paris, Germany, Holland, and Sweden, respectively. Even the relatively insignificant city of Taizhou has their own British knock-off town. Huaxi, dubbed the world’s richest village , has not allowed itself to be undone by other copycats, and has made an entire theme park of knock-off landmarks from around the world. Read more on Vagabond Journey: Welcome to Hallstatt, China, An Austrian Village Cloned Though Yujiapu is something that has never been done to this extent before: the DNA of an entire district of a city has been replicated and given life on the opposite side of the globe. The Atlantic reported that, “The miniature city is a near facsimile of New York–down to the river wrapping around the peninsula’s southern tip.” The Rockefeller Center is in the process of being cloned, and there is an identical pair of skyscrapers going up that very much resemble the twin towers of the original World Trade Center.

But these plans were not half-baked in some shady corner of a half-rate, cut and paste architectural sweatshop; no, China has called in teams of bona-fide first stringers for this game. The Rockefeller Center replica and Yujiapu Twin Towers are being handled by Yinfeini Property, the China side subsidiary of Tishman Speyer — the architectural firm that built the original World Trade Center and are currently in the process of completing 1 WTC. The Rockefellers are likewise not standing idly by as a copycat of the building that bears their legacy is being erected in China; nope, their Rose Rock Group is helping mint Yujiapu’s centerpiece: a 588 meter high tower that will be even taller than 1 WTC, which itself is set to become the tallest building in the western hemisphere. The Lincoln center is also in the fray, helping design Yujiapu’s performing arts center. So not only is Yujiapu being built to resemble Manhattan, it is being built by some of the same firms who made the original.

Read more on Vagabond Journey: Check out Oriental Windsor County, a British village in rural China This all sounded to me like something out of a Vonnegut novel, and I have to admit that I could not shake the feeling of suspended reality as I crossed a bridge and passed through the skyscraper gates of Yujiapu. I found myself in an entire city that was in the process of coming to life. Work crews were racing here and there, up scaffolding, down freight elevators. It was like being among a colony of ants building up a concrete nest all around me. The grey, fixture-less, concrete skeletons of skyscrapers rose over dirt roadways, and at each turn these towers of bones continued on and on. Their sides were speckled with dark, windowless cavities, and the effect was like looking upon a stack of skulls lining the path to some heart of darkness. Everything in sight was in the process of being built, there were no temporal bearings anywhere, this entire city was morphing and changing as I watched. This rising colony of finance was remarkable. I’ve been in new cities in China that were in the process of being built before, but I’ve never experienced anything on this scale.

These were massive skyscrapers, not mere high-rises. In fact, one of these fledgling towers will someday be one of the largest structures on the planet. What I was looking at was a live-action snapshot of something historic in the making — something which seems to represent the rise of China as a whole. Yujiapu is slated to be one of this country’s prime financial centers, and its incredible scale and scope provokes the same worn questions to be ask: Is this a historic success story in the making? Is this a historic flop waiting to happen? Whatever the case ends up being, a monument is in the works at Yujiapu: a spindly, concrete one that should give us a dose of deja vu. “This is the key project of all our projects in China,” a partner at Luo Si Luo Ke (The Rockefeller Group’s Chinese subsidiary) told CNN , “at the moment, no other project is more important than this.” In early March of this year, the news program “60 Minutes” released a report declaring that construction at Yujiapu had ground to a halt. My visit was mere weeks after this report aired, and their take couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Yujiapu is not stagnant, it is rising steadily, piece by piece, floor by floor, tower by tower. Though I have to admit that the construction did not seem to be going full tilt, and the amount of workers that I observed did not appear adequate for completing a city of this magnitude anytime soon. But the fact remains that Yujiapu has not been abandoned, it has not been deserted, it is still being actively constructed. Though I call Yujiapu a Manhattan FiDi knock-off, it is not an exact replica. Though some buildings are being cloned and the theme is overtly “Manhattan,” the layout and finer aspects of the design is different. One major deviation from the original is that Yujiapu’s developers have added a Central Park-like green space through the middle of their creation, whereas the actually Manhattan financial district is pretty much a contiguous koosh ball of skyscrapers.

The Atlantic notes other marked differences : A few of Yujiapu’s features are originals: an urban park on a whale-shaped island; an underground strip of high-end stores; and China’s first three-tier, underground train station, where bullet trains will shoot commuters off to Beijing as well as Tianjin, a nearby boom town of almost eleven million people. I soon enough found myself standing before the fetus of this transportation hub. It didn’t look like much, just the skeletal outline of an egg shaped structure, but this was part of what was enthralling about this place: it is in the process of becoming, and predicting what it will eventually mean is like trying to see through the opaque smog that blankets this country. Where is all this money coming from? Building the largest financial district on the planet is obviously expensive. Estimates in 2011 pegged the cost of building Yujiapu at 200 billion RMB, but this seems to have increased since them.

Much of this money is coming in the way of loans, and, as some reports have outlined, the various developers at Yujiapu are struggling for new lines of credit: To build Yujiapu, Tianjin officials are piling onto borrowing that is already at least almost half a trillion yuan – -equivalent to half the annual per capita income of the city’s 13 million people. One of the companies building Yujiapu — Tianjin Binhai New Area Construction & Investment Group Co. — sold 10 billion yuan in bonds in November. It earmarked 1 billion yuan from the sale to fund the construction of the district’s transport hub . . . In the first half of the year its debt, mostly from banks, rose 11.9 percent from the end of 2010 to 71 billion yuan, according to the prospectus. Partly due to the blast of construction at Yujiapu, Tianjin has topped the national GDP charts of China over the past couple of years, showing an incredible 17+ percent growth rate. But they also have been incurring a stockpile of loans ( 47.2 percent in 2009 ).

When such substantial growth is piggybacked on credit, the possibility of it falling flat is always present. But why does it look like Manhattan? There is perhaps no greater singular symbol of wealth and economic dominion in the world than the financial district of Manhattan. The place is the Great Pyramid of global economics, it’s everything that Yujiapu — and China for that matter — aspires to be. Perhaps symbolically, Yujiapu is a conquering, or at least putting itself on the same level with this great center of global commerce by replicating it. Or perhaps it’s just a magnanimous expression of China’s new consumer culture: “I’ll take one Manhattan please, put it on credit. Thank you very much.” Whatever the case, the cold, no-frills monoliths of Communist-era architecture no longer warm many hearts here in China. A country that only constructed block-shaped, grey buildings for a generation perhaps deserves some critical leeway when the creativity valve is released and they start busting out with some of the most outlandish buildings and development projects the world has ever known. Freed from the strictures tradition, hurtling into the future, architectural anarchy is the rule in modern China.

Read more on Vagabond Journey: China’s Knock-Off Cities and Western Architectural Copycatting, What Does It Mean? Though it is my impression that the Manhattan theme is more or less a promotional gimmick to put and keep this project in the spotlight. For this place to prosper it needs to attract both national and international companies. They need to make a buzz, push some buttons, sound off a few sirens, trip a couple alarms. Journalists are ogling over Yujiapu not because it is intended to be northern China’s financial hub and represents the over-development, over-spending, and over-optimism that characterizes this phase of the country’s development, but because it is being built to look like Manhattan. To be honest, I probably would not have visited Yujiapu if it was merely another big Chinese financial development on the brink of bankruptcy, and very few of us probably would ever hear about this place if it wasn’t a replica. In an odd twist of logic, by copying a famous city Yujiapu made itself unique.

Though whatever the reasons are for its style, when completed, Yujiapu is intended to be a world class financial center spoken about in the same sentence as Pudong, Zurich, Chicago, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, and, yes, Manhattan. But will Yujiapu earn this place in the global lexicon of financial districts, or will it collapse under its own weight and become the world’s most spectacular ghost city — a relic of the China that could have been? Nobody knows. But for now at least, the workers at Yujiapu still smiled as we gazed upon the emerging skyline of their Manhattan. Yujiapu Twin Towers

Question: If Manhattan is the financial hub of New York, the area of Pudong is the similar equivalent for which city?
Answer: Shanghai